Take Courage (2 page)

“He wants to be swung over the water,” I said, for father and I, and sometimes even Will when he remembered, would pleasure the child in this way on our walks.

John's stern face relaxed into a wintry smile.

“Jump then, David,” he said kindly.

He gave David his right hand, put his left beneath the child's elbow, and swung him through the air with such a will that David shouted with pleasure. He ran on ahead to seek more pools, and would have us jump him over every patch of water he found. John seemed content to humour him; it was a simple pastime but a harmless, and pleasant enough; we reached Little Holroyd hot and a trifle out of breath, but good friends, with our fathers close on our heels.

Mrs. Thorpe Came to the door of the Breck to welcome us. At that time she was a large dark powerful woman, with an implacable air; she always dressed in very neat dark gowns, of rich materials but old-fashioned in cut; her features were heavy and plain, like John's, and she had a mole by one eyebrow which I could see frightened David. She eyed me grimly, greeted me with the false effusion some people keep for children, put her face down to mine but did not kiss me. But neither can I give my kisses easily; so we touched cheeks without embrace. This surprised her a little, I think, though indeed I could not help it; she gave me a shrewd glance and a grim half-smile, and invited me into the house with a plainer but warmer manner. We respected each other for our awkward honesty from that moment, though there was never real affection between us, or full ease. I felt that if her daughter Elizabeth took after her, Will's way through life would be firm and straight, very reputable and honest though perhaps rather lacking in joy.

But Elizabeth did not resemble her mother, as I found when we were all seated at table in the house; true, she had Mrs. Thorpe's black hair and heavy frame, but her look was peevish and sickly, and in spirit she was like her father, that is, of easier, less lofty tone. Indeed at times I have found a certain humorous pity for Mr. Thorpe, compressed by the uncompromising honesty of his wife and son into a straiter and narrower way than he would himself have chosen. That day, for instance, he made jokes about Elizabeth and Will, and paid me compliments on what he was pleased to call my broad white forehead and
grave grey eyes, saying that my father would not be able to keep Penninah long at home, and so on. Elizabeth tittered, Will threw himself about on the bench, I held my head high and tried to smile though my cheek burned, finding his intention kind though the joke was unpleasing, and my father with an easy transition led the talk away from him to the morning's sermon; but his wife and son scowled so at poor Mr. Thorpe that he grew abashed, muttered and mumbled and finally dropped quiet. But it was not in his nature to stay down for long, and whenever the talk touched business he spoke up shrewdly.

The house-body of The Breck, where we sat at meat, was very well kept and furnished. The quarries in the mullioned windows, and the flagged floor, had been well washed, and the great oak table and benches, the armchairs and buffets, were polished and gleaming. Not a speck of dust lingered in any cranny of the big panelled court cupboard, or in the carved rims of the table trenchers. All the copper pans and the broiling irons by the hearth, and the brass fittings of the fowling-piece hanging over the chimney-breast, shone bright in the firelight. I could see that Mrs. Thorpe must be a notable housewife, and I thought that her serving-maid and the apprentice, Joseph Lister, who helped to pass the meat before sitting to table, might find her an exacting one. Lister, a scrubby simple-looking boy enough, with a flat face full of freckles, a grinning mouth, and coarse hair the colour of rust falling into his eyes, was placed on David's other side; at first I did not like him being so close, for though he doubtless meant no harm he fixed such an impish stare on me as disconcerted me, he seemed to be watching every mouthful I ate. But soon I had cause to thank him for his kind demeanour to David; he helped the child to turn his trencher and cut his meat, and whispering in his ear such simple jokes as children understand, kept him quiet and mannerly. Indeed David quite forgot the rest of us, and sat gazing up silently at Lister with that sweet lovely smile of his, looking so like an angel that even Mrs. Thorpe, as
I could see, found her heart melted to the child. In some ways, it seemed, Lister was less simple than he looked; for on his master's asking him what he remembered of Mr. Okell's sermon that morning, he gabbled off the heads of the discourse, and some of the particulars, with a wonderful accuracy of remembrance. (It seemed he had two uncles, ministers.) David catching up some of his words, repeated them in the very tone, chanting and somewhat pompous, of the Vicar, at which we all laughed.

“David will be a minister when he grows up, like William, won't you, David?” said Mrs. Thorpe.

“Yes,” said David, nodding solemnly.

“Nay, there's one already in the family; one's enough,” objected Mr. Thorpe. “David must be a master clothier, like his father.”

I saw my father's face cloud at this, and Mrs. Thorpe saw it too, for she drew the talk back to preaching:

“Sermons,” she said, “are not what they were in my young days.”

At once my father and Mr. Thorpe were agreeing warmly. They were both of a Puritan cast of mind, that is to say, they believed in simple homely ways of religion, thinking that ceremonies were so many arrogant barriers between the soul and God. Bishops they greatly disliked, as Popish and tending to subject religious things to worldly authority, for Bishops were appointed by the King; and they both had great hopes that the Church in England would soon throw off all such encumbrances and stand forth as a reformed and truly Protestant Church, like some of those abroad. Some decrees of the late King James, which seemed to hinder this, had greatly vexed them. How could sermons have spiritual meat in them, complained my father now, when King James had given orders that preachers must adhere strictly to their texts— “strictly” being interpreted to admit only of what was favourable to the Bishops and himself?

“Aye, how indeed? It's against our just English liberties to restrict us so,” said Mr. Thorpe.

“It all springs from James's notion of Divine Right,” began Will, eager to show his learning in matters of religion. “The King believed he had a Divine Right by inheritance to rule his kingdom, and the Bishops a Divine Right to rule the Church.”

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Thorpe in a comfortable tone. “Help yourself to the ale, Will, and don't talk to me about Divine Right and such; it's nowt.”

“Perhaps this new young King will do better for us,” simpered Elizabeth. Her tone was foolish, but I was glad to find her interposing on behalf of Will.

“What, with a French Papist for a wife?” said Mrs. Thorpe. “It's not likely.”

“Is King Charles's wife truly a Catholic?” asked Elizabeth.

She sounded shocked, and I felt shocked and uneasy too. Now that I am old, and have seen much life and many men of differing opinions, I find in myself a disposition (though I dare not confess it to my son) to believe that a good man may please God in any religion, Catholic or Church or Presbyterian, provided he follows it with his whole heart. But when I was a little girl, Catholics, to the ordinary English people, meant the foul treachery of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament, and persecutions, and Spain; and Spain meant attempts to murder our former great Queen Elizabeth, and to bring England under the rule of the Pope and suppress our English rights. So when Mrs. Thorpe nodded assent to her daughter, I had for a moment an uncomfortable feeling, as if something were suddenly unsafe and wrong, and I ventured to ask disapprovingly in my timid childish voice:

“Why did King Charles want to marry a Catholic lady?”

“All his family lean towards the Catholics, love,” said Mrs. Thorpe. “All the Stuarts do. His grandmother, that daughter of Belial, Mary Queen of Scots, was a Catholic.”

“You can hardly blame the poor lad for his grandmother,” said my father with a twinkle in his eye.

“No—no,” conceded Mr. Thorpe, though as it seemed with some reluctance. “But I blame him for choosing that Duke of Buckingham as his favourite.”

“A most haughty and licentious man,” Mrs. Thorpe said sternly. “He cannot guide himself aright, never name a king.”

“Let us trust that the King will let himself be guided by Parliament,” said my father.

“Aye, Parliament will keep an eye on him,” said Mr. Thorpe with a grim relish. “If only he'll keep out of matters he knows nothing about! Look at that Cockayne business! It well nigh brought the whole cloth trade of England to destruction.”

“What was the Cockayne project, Father?” asked John, his gruff voice sounding for the first time since we came to table.

“It was a proclamation, son, forbidding white cloths to be sent out of England. They were to be dyed and dressed at home by a company, headed by Sir William Cockayne, and not sent abroad except they were finished and coloured.”

“Why did it bring ruin, then?” asked John.

“The foreign countries declined to buy the coloured cloths—they had always dyed and dressed the cloths themselves, and wished to continue the employment,” explained my father.

“Aye! And besides, Sir William had no more idea how to dress and dye than little David here,” said Mr. Thorpe. “Nay, he had less. I saw some of his wares at Hull. Cockled! I tell you, Robert, I've never seen the like, before or since. I wouldn't send such poor stuff out of Little Holroyd; I'd be ashamed. No wonder the foreigners wouldn't buy. More than seventeen thousand less cloths than customary were sent out of the port of London in the first three months that the Cockayne company was at work. The markets in London were loaded with unsold cloths, and the country was stuffed with 'em.”

“Indeed we have had some strong blasts of adversity in the cloth trade of late,” agreed my father. “I hear that
five thousand Yorkshire pieces lay unsold at Blackwell Hall last week. Is it true, do you know?”

His voice was low and hesitating, very unlike his usual clear tones, and Mr. Thorpe kept his eyes down as he answered: “Aye, Robert, it's true enough. I've fifteen there myself.”

Mrs. Thorpe exchanged a glance with her husband, then spoke up briskly.

“Son,” she said to John, “Penninah and David will like to see the farm. Joseph Lister, you can go with them. And you, Will and Elizabeth, have you nothing to say to each other? Take a walk down by the beck.”

“Under favour,” said Will, stammering: “I had thought to take Elizabeth to the afternoon exercises.”

Mrs. Thorpe, well content with such a religious occupation, gave prompt permission, and Will and Elizabeth scrambled up and were off to Bradford Church before she had time to change her mind, though I thought Elizabeth looked as if she could have found something better to do on a June afternoon with a man she loved than listen to sermons. Still, at these afternoon exercises the listeners were allowed to walk about the church and talk if they were so minded, so perhaps it would not be as dull as she feared. The four of us children—as I suppose we were, though I felt quite a woman grown at the time—ran out of the house too, glad to escape from our elders' talk into the sunshine, and Lister began to jump David down from the steps outside the door. David laughed with glee, and as Lister caught him carefully in his big rough hands I saw no cause to forbid the pastime.

“Would you like to see our looms, Penninah?” said John beside me.

I had no great wish to do so, thinking they would be just like ours at home, but I could see John was proud of them and wished to show them, and I was willing to give him pleasure, so I followed him through the kitchen—where stood the biggest meal-ark I had ever seen, twice the size of ours—upstairs to the loom-chamber. It was silent and still, as was natural, being Sunday.

I saw at once that everything here was much finer and better kept than ours at home. There were three looms, each carrying an unfinished piece; his father would take one on horseback to Bradford next Thursday, John said, if he could get it fulled and milled at Bradford mill by then, and the other two would go with the carrier to Black-well Hall in London, along with a heap of kerseys, thirty of them lying already in the corner. In the next chamber, the taking-in place, there was a huge pack of rough fleece wool, waiting to go out to be carded and spun, and then a pile of neat hanks of yarn, ready to be woven. In this chamber, too, three pairs of huge walker shears hung on the wall, their big broad blades all skew and dangling; we did not have such tools at home, so I did not know their employment till John told me that they were used in dressing the cloth, as were also the long curved shear board, the teasels in handles, the presses and press papers. All these things were polished and clean and orderly arranged; and long sheets of foolscap lay folded on a desk which stood on a table in the corner, so neatly written with figures and characters, I had never before seen anything like them. John seemed pleased when he saw my glance rest on these; he told me eagerly that he had kept the accounts, of wool and yarn and pieces, and where they went and when, and the price they gained, for his father for the last two years. To please him I went over to the desk and looked at them more closely; the sheets were neatly stitched together with pack thread at the side, and the figures all being in rows made broad and narrow margins by turn, like a pattern; I would not have believed that John's thick short fingers could have composed anything so pretty.

Then we went down the stairs again and out of doors, passing behind our parents on our way. Their heads were close and they were talking very earnestly, but seemingly in good friendship, to my relief; “they are discussing the marriage treaty,” said John to me, smiling. His smile was a little stiff on its hinges, as if he did not use it often, so that I felt embarrassed to be watching it, though kindly towards
him, and turning aside asked what was the little low building on the right of the house, behind the tenters. John said it was the lead-house, where cloths were dyed. We had no lead-house, so partly in interest and partly to pass the time, I asked to see it, whereupon John ran to the house and begged the key of his father, and opening the door bade me hold my skirts tight, lest they be discoloured. Indeed the roof, walls, floor and pans, seemed all thickly smeared in blue; I did not like to withdraw in discourteous haste, since I had asked to see the place, but I was glad when John asked me if I would care to visit the laithe on the other side of the house. Here there was a mistal for the cows, a great bin of corn, a heap of hay with a fork stuck into it, and two brown horses with well-brushed tails, in narrow stalls. John slapped their haunches to make them turn so that I could see their heads, but indeed I wished he had not, for the strong beat of their hoofs as they moved, their glistening eyes and huge teeth, alarmed me, and I was loth to stroke their noses as John wished, though too proud to show my fear. The stables seemed close and dark, musty with floating shreds from the corn and hay, and very quiet, the only sound being that of the horses munching. John rested his arms along the top of the stall, leaned his head on his hand and fixed his gaze on me. Though his face was plain his eyes were very fine when he opened them wide, dark brown with a kind of glow in their depths, so that they gave him a very serious and expressive air; and suddenly I felt uneasy at being indoors alone so long with him, I wanted to be out in the air with other people about me. I said quickly: